PSA: PokerStars will not let me cash out -- EVER!

[Alobar]

Shouldnt OP offering to pay any bank fees negate the whole "we arent a transfer service, blah blah blah" bit? I mean fine, give him his money, but make him pay the cost of the original 6K deposit, and the cost of the 6K withdrawl.

The fact that stars gets to permanently sit on 6K and draw interest on it, is utter BS.

[augie_]

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Shouldnt OP offering to pay any bank fees negate the whole "we arent a transfer service, blah blah blah" bit? I mean fine, give him his money, but make him pay the cost of the original 6K deposit, and the cost of the 6K withdrawl.

The fact that stars gets to permanently sit on 6K and draw interest on it, is utter BS.

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no. so if this guy should be allowed to move 6k without playing because he's paying a fee, should some guy be allowed to move 100k? 200k? 500k? What if they pay the fee?

[tendog]

its not about the fees.

its the fact that they are not a money transfer business.

politicians and opponents of gambling sites say that gambling sites can be used to launder money.

hence stars has some responsibility to not allow transfers between people who are not using the money to play.

[Mitch Evans]

OP,

Can you clarify this:

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Several months ago, when two people owed me money,

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Not a loan paid back to me.

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You didn't lend them money but they owed you money? Care to elaborate?

[ADBjester]

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So, instead of addressing issues with poker sites so that they don't keep happening in the future, we should inconvenience ourselves with more complicated solutions? Poker Stars needs to come up with Terms and Conditions for inter-account transfers instead of being inconsistent time and time again.


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I think the sites have been pretty consistent that inter-account transfers are not to be used for paying of outside debts. All problems with inter-account transfers seem to be due to people trying to get around this.

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I don't understand the sites' logic on this, provided the player puts in some time at the tables. If the player was going to take the payment of debt and deposit on the site anyway, what is the difference? Especially in these times of few deposit options, inter-account transfer is the easiest way to get money onto a site. These things need to be regulated or we could find ourselves in a similar position in the future. I'm actually getting nervous about withdrawing now, as even though I didn't deposit initially via IAT I have sent funds to numerous people and I don't want that used as an excuse to not be paid.

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It's pretty easy to grok. If the $6K was deposited directly to one account and then transferred to another in payment of a debt, how does the site see this? Well, for starters, they pay about 3%-6% in fees on that money depending on the deposit method.... more since October. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] (Note that credit card processors charge a minimum of 2.2% for the SAFEST of transactions -- Sears, Olive Garden, etc, where the card is present, electronically swiped and signed. Online transactions of any kind -- gaming or not -- are considered much higher risk of chargeback and thus carry a higher vig... and online gaming just adds to that "uncaptured" surcharge).

So, the depositor sends $6,000 and the site pays... call it 5%, or $300. The site actually receives only $5,700 from the deposit. Thus, if that money doesn't generate $300 in rake, the site loses money for allowing customers to use it as a bank.

If that deposit is immediately transferred to another player and quickly cashed out without generating $300 in rake, the site has taken it in the shorts.

So long as the funds have had commensurate play (either before or after the transfer) generating rake greater than or equal to the fees paid by the site to accept the deposit, the site ought not have a problem with it.

I don't know how much rake was paid by the OP (or his benefactor) here... but it sounds to me like it was less than the site's cost of accepting the deposit in the first place.

Jester

[cardman]

It all depends on the deposit method and location. Western Union is the most expensive. Bank wires between banks for countries in the European Union are cheap. Credit cards are awful because many credit cards are adopting cash advance fees and the risk of charge backs. Checks require weeks to months to clear. Various e-wallets charge differing amounts for merchants ranging from 0.5%-3.5% per transaction.

[cardman]

PokerStars isn't letting him withdrawal not because of the deposit and withdrawal fees. I can guarantee that. If it was, they would have told him how much poker he would have to play before he could withdraw.

JPT III needs to transfer the 6K back to his friends and ask them to pay him directly. He says he can't, but I'm still not sure why that is. Seems like the easiest solution. Either way, Pokerstars should never have allowed the 6K to be deposited to a BRAND NEW account IN THE FIRST PLACE and it appears they only flagged it at withdrawal time.

[Thremp]

cardman,

PS will let him xfer to anyone which is [censored].

[StellarWind]

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Several months ago, when two people owed me money, we agreed that they would pay me in Stars money. I didn't have a Stars account yet, and had been staying away from Poker since Party pulled out. I figured this to be a good time to get back in, and a good way to get my money. So I opened an account, and had approx 6K transferred to me at Stars. That's how I funded my account.

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You are not allowed to do this. $6000 is far in excess of what you need to play low-limit holdem. The transfer would have been legitimate if your motivation had been to buy into a high stakes game and you needed the $6000 to do it. Your actual motive was to use Stars as a transfer service to settle an outside debt.

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Fully aware that Stars is not a clearinghouse

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You admit that you knew the rule.

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Then, Pokerstars wrote me an email requesting an explanation of why I funded my account by receiving money from other players. So, I wrote back, explaining as I did above the circumstances.

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You admitted to Stars that your misused the transfer service.

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I guess the thing I really find unconscionable here is how Stars permitted me to open an account and fund it with player transfers, and then later takes the position that any transfer not made "as a result of activity at [Stars] tables" cannot be withdrawn. In that event, no one should ever be able to initially fund his or her account with player transfers, as they necessarily could not have made the transfer as a result of table activity!

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So what if they didn't express themselves perfectly. Stop being dense. They are trying to say that there needs to be a real connection between you receiving $6000 and your poker play. If you had taken this money and begun regularly playing 15/30 LHE with it there would have been little doubt that you actually needed a $6000 bankroll. That's the purpose behind allowing a $6000 transfer. It could have been legitimate but in your case time made it evident that it wasn't.

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In addition, simply as a matter of good faith and customer service, they should at least offer me some resolution (pay banking fees, more play at the tables, etc.) whereby I can make the withdraw, somehow, someday, of MY MONEY.

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The policy exists to prevent money-laundering. There is no way for Stars to distinguish between what you are doing and money laundering. For all I know you are money laundering and you might not even realize it. For example your friends could be funding their account with drug money. Paying you is a way to spend it without necessarily involving a bank.

Anyway you think that Stars should offer to take a bribe ("pay banking fees, more play at the tables") in exchange for completing this improper transaction [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]. It's a little late for that. Timely cover play might have hidden from Stars that the transfer was not legitimately poker-related but at this point you've admitted the truth.

Maybe Stars could have handled this better, but the bottom line is you knowingly violated a very serious rule recognized by all reputable poker sites and gaming regulators. Stars has caught you and you've confessed and now they have no option but to insist that you reverse the illegal transfer before anyone can withdraw the money.

[Green Devil]

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at some point before accepting the fund transfer.

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But Stars is not locking you after the transfer. They allow you to transfer back. Seems like the simplest solution. Why don't you do this?

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I cannot, mb. Just cannot. Wish I could.

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I hope my post won't make things worst but as you begun a debate about this, I will clarify and offer a possible solution.

Unless we are talking about some other money. I was the one that transfered a little under $5500 (or maybe a little more as there was something about your girlfriend also having funds stucked but I can't remember her name) to your newly opened Stars account. It was during the few days where Neteller still allowed americans to do member to member transfers and you couldn't get your money out. As I remember you were very polite and trusted me with your money for allmost a whole day as I had reached my maximum transfer amount for that day and did the transaction the next day. I did a lot of transfers those 3 days and Stars knew exactly what was going on as I only begun transfering money after asking for their permission. I have unfortunately erased the emails, so you will all have to trust me on that.
I transferd money to maybe 50 players (and sometimes much larger amounts than 5.5K and I haven't heard from anybody having problems with the transfered money, so my guess is that you just haven't played enough to justify Stars expenses or something we are not aware of has happened in the meantime.

The money came from your Neteller account, I transfered to my Stars account and from there to your own Stars account.

If Stars is really not going to allow you to withdraw that money ever but gives you the possibility to transfer it back to me, I will be willing to withdraw it for you and send it to you by WU. This of course implies that you have to trust me again with your money, but if you can't get it anyway, unless you want to use it to play poker at Stars...

However, you must first clearly explain the situation to Stars and obtain their permission to what I am suggesting, (maybe they will agree if you refund any fees they had to pay). I haven't played at Stars since the Neteller situation as I find games have deteriorated a lot over there, but I have 2 years of playing history prior to that.

On top of that, I will have to withdraw to Neteller and then thru the Neteller debit card wich is an expensive transaction. Including WU fees, you will probably lose 10/12% of your money. I won't keep anything for myself, and as you can only withdraw 1k a day with the Neteller card, the whole operation would take a week.

I hope you can find an easier solution to your problem but if you can't and Stars accepts my suggestion, you are welcome to contact me.

GD